Finding Morpheus
by Sangri Star
Summary: Tracking down Morpheus isn't always easy, but you can do it if you believe.


Another late night, another dinner skipped. My room was so cold; my breath was turning into a haze in front of me. I shuddered, despite having wool socks, jeans, and a few layers of shirts. I thought to myself, "I look like one of those homeless people on the streets." Though I was sure they were shivering as well.

I was seated in front of my computer, something which I considered like a baby to me, and curled close to it. The heat coming from it was not abundant, but at least I believed in it. I couldn't wear gloves because it would interfere with my typing.

My eyes began to ache with the glare of the computer. I did not give up though, I knew what I needed to accomplish. To find him. He whose name is synonymous with the God of Dreams.

I had overheard someone telling someone else about him. I do believe it was in a club I went to once, _Diamond Dogs_ was the name of the club, I believe. And over the pulsating music I heard a stranger say to another stranger:

"He is seen in the news as a terrorist, with his underground group. I know you've heard of him. But he is not wicked. I know him; I know about the Matrix, or at least what is told to me."

"The Matrix..." the other person whispered. "I've heard about that too, but what is it?"

"I cannot say. You are being watched, though. You must not say anything about this meeting, for if you are caught... something dreadful will happen."

"Can you at least explain who's watching me?"

"Wait for Morpheus to call... It will come if you believe."

If you believe. That is what I knew. I wanted him to call me; I wanted to know what the real story is. That is why that night, and many other nights before I had scoured through the muck of the World Wide Web for some sort of... clue.

The first time I tried, I typed in at a search engine: "M-O-R-P-H-E-U-S" and hit the enter button. There wasn't a single hit for him. I groaned. It was going to be harder than I thought.

My stomach growled furiously at me. I hadn't been eating too much since I heard that stranger at the club. I wished things would speed up, it was taking too long.

A few hours later, I finally broke through the barrier a little. There were two articles on the man. One told of the hacking of an important government database. The other told of mysterious murders that may have been linked to him.

There was a knock on my bedroom door. I was only sixteen, and I lived with my mother. I minimized the windows on my computer. "Come in!" I called.

My mother walked in. She addressed me. "Please, come and eat, Sweetie Pie."

"I'm not hungry," I said. I was lying, but I seemed to think my search was more important than myself. I had been going to school, but I was losing sleep and was malnourished, I knew.

"You have to eat! How long has it been?"

"I don't know."

"I didn't want you to wind up this way."

"What way? What are you talking about?"

"You obviously think you're not pretty, but you are very pretty. Is it a boy at school you're having problems with? Or are you being teased? What is it, Sweetie Pie?"

"You're crazy! I don't care if I'm pretty or not, there are no problems with any boys, and I'm not being teased."

"But you're losing weight drastically. I know what is going on. If you don't start eating soon, I'm taking you to a doctor. I want you to get treated for your anorexia."

"What anorexia?!" I cried. "I don't have anorexia! I just haven't been feeling well... Food just makes me sick right now."

"Then you must have bulimia! You know, that's treatable too, just a little therapy."

I loved my mother, but sometimes she just didn't understand that there was nothing wrong with me, even though I was a teenager and situations like anorexia and bulimia and other things did happen, that didn't happen to me. I stood up and hugged my mother.

"It's all right, mom."

She smiled and said, "Will you please eat, then?"

I sighed. I was very annoyed by the fact she thought something was wrong with me. "I will if you quit bothering me about it."

We left my room and my mother gave me a bowl of ramen noodles. I took it back to my room and ate them, letting the steam fog up my glasses and distorting my view of the world.

It was then, when my glasses were filled with steam and my mouth was full of warm, delicious noodles, that I noticed something strange on my computer. The windows were gone, as well as my background with a picture of Alfred Molina as Doctor Otto Octavius in _Spider-Man 2_. The screen was black.

Muffled by the noodles, I still managed to mumble, "What the hell?"

Slowly, green letters formed on the screen:

HELLO.

I took off my glasses, wiped my lens off, and put them back on. I placed my empty bowl and fork to the side. I typed back:

HELLO. WHO IS THIS?

The reply:

YOU KNOW.

I leaned closer to the screen, the cloud of air rising from my lips. With rock-hard fingers, I replied:

GOD OF DREAMS?

The answer:

YES. I KNOW YOU'VE BEEN SEARCHING. AND YOU KNOW...

I ended his sentence:

I AM NOT ALONE.

And before he disappeared, he said:

THEY ARE WATCHING YOU. BE CAREFUL. I WILL FIND YOU SOON.

Immediately after that, my computer went back to normal, Alfred Molina picture and all.

Morpheus. I wanted him to come back. I needed to know what it, the Matrix, was. But someone was watching. Who were 'they'? I wanted to know, yet I was afraid to know. I picked up my empty bowl and took it to the kitchen. Then, I walked back to my room.

I curled up on my bed, underneath blankets to keep me warm. I took off my glasses and placed them on a small table next to me. I closed my eyes, they seemed to welcome sleep. My brain, however, did not. I kept thinking about what was to come, I began to feel paranoid. I had a very welcome but not very peaceful night of sleep.

The next morning I rubbed my eyes and went to take a shower. Feeling somewhat awake, I got dressed in my school uniform. I went to a Catholic high school. There, I always did my homework, I was a well-behaved kid. But on my own time, I was very different – going to clubs late at night, as I said before, barely escaping the cops,and most recently, living with only my computer as company.

I packed a change of clothes in my backpack. I had a very different agenda than what I was supposed to have. I went to the kitchen and my mother was cooking scrambled eggs. She never cooked breakfast on the weekdays.

"What's the occasion?" I asked.

"Oh, nothing. I just decided to make something nice for you."

I sat down at the table and she placed a plate of eggs and toast and a glass of orange juice in front of me. She had the same, only she had coffee instead of orange juice, at her spot across the table.

When we were finished, I collected the dishes and placed them in the dishwasher. Then, we got into the car and my mother drove me to St. Margaret's School for Girls. I hugged her goodbye, for I had a feeling I would not be returning. She drove away, unaware. I stood at the gates of St. Margaret's peering in through the iron bars. Bars, such that of a prison.

The grounds inside were swarming with students. My friend Olivia spotted me and walked over.

"Hey!"

"Hey!"

"Aren't you supposed to be in here? Come on, the bell's going to ring soon, and you know Sister Joanne gets very irate if we're late to class."

"Ollie, I don't know..."

"Don't know about what?"

I grabbed her hand through the iron bars. "I have a very bad feeling about coming to school today. Something is going to happen. I must go."

"You're playing hooky!"

"Um... yeah! I don't know where I'm going to go yet, though."

"You're playing hooky without me, nonetheless."

"I'm sorry, but there is just something I have to do on my own. Remember though, Ollie. You're my best friend."

"And you're mine. Souls of sisters -"

"- Remained join for eternity."

"I won't tell anyone at all. Just next time, take me with you. You know, I need to have fun too. School is boring."

I smiled. "I will."

The bell rang and we parted. I turned away as fast as I could to avoid being seen. I darted into a store. It looked like it sold new-age things. A black woman with big gold hoops in her ears and too much makeup sat behind a counter. I asked if I could go into her bathroom. She gave me the key and I went inside. I quickly changed into my other set of clothes and placed the others in my backpack. I gave the key back to the woman and left the store.

Moving along the city streets, I was fifteen blocks away and down by the public library when I heard my cell phone ring. I panicked. My mother was the only one who called me, usually. Had the nuns back at St. Margaret's seen me leave? Did she know I was skipping? I answered it.

"Hello?"

"Where are you?" It wasn't a voice I found recognizable. "This is who you like to refer to as 'God of Dreams.'"

"You've come for me!" I exclaimed.

"Quiet now, where are you?"

"I'm at the public library."

"All right. You go inside. I'll meet you in there." He hung up.

I went inside as he said. I started browsing in the science fiction section when a bald black man in a trench coat and sunglasses walked up to me. "Lady of Spain, you're who I talked to last night," he said.

"Morpheus," I said. "In the flesh."

He nodded. "So you've been trying to find me, I hear."

"I heard your name mentioned before in a club I went to a couple of weeks ago. I've been searching ever since."

"Yes. I do believe Siam was a little bit careless as he talked to Isis about me. I can't have the Agents after me."

"The Agents? So they are the ones you said are watching me."

"I know it is haphazard of me as well to be here talking to you, but I decided to meet you rather than send someone else. Let me explain to you on our way about this situation." We walked out of the library together and stopped. There was a black car waiting outside. He opened the door for me and I slid inside next to a young man with dirty blonde hair and brown eyes. Morpheus got in beside me. A woman with black hair was seated in the driver's seat, and a skinny boy that looked about my age sat in the passenger's seat. "Lady of Spain," Morpheus said to me, "That in the driver's seat is Trinity. The one in the passenger's seat is Mouse."

Mouse turned and shook my hand. "Hi."

"Hi."

"And that one, sitting beside you," Morpheus indicated, "Is the one that you overheard at the club, Siam."

Siam grinned. "Yeah, I've been getting hell about that ever since, but I think we've gotten a good one from it, don't you think?" He shook my hand.

"That's not an excuse, Siam," Morpheus glared at Siam through his sunglasses, and then looked back at me. "Now, Lady of Spain, let me tell you some history. He lifted his hand and pointed towards the outside. "This is the world as it was at the end of the twentieth century. This is how you see it, and how millions of others see it. But it isn't real. It exists now only as part of a neural-interactive simulation that we call the Matrix. We have only pieces of information but what we know for certain is that at some point in the early twenty-first century all of mankind was united, marveling as we gave birth to artificial intelligence. But we depended on machines too much. Robots revolted against us, and now most humans are imprisoned within this computer program called the Matrix. It is what we are in now, and what you've been living in for sixteen years. I know, it might be hard to believe at first, but you must understand."

But it wasn't that hard to believe for me. "What does it take to get out of the Matrix?"

"We're going to take you somewhere where we will be able to take you out." Trinity stopped the car.

"Is she bugged?" She asked.

"No," Morpheus. "The Agents never reached her."

"That makes our job a little easier, then," Siam said, still with a grin on his face.

The car doors opened, and I climbed out behind Siam. We stood on the corner outside an old arcade. I had been there before, a long time ago. It had closed, though. Mouse found a way in for us, and we went inside. I walked with them past dusty pinball machines and skeeball games. I spotted one of my old favorite games, _Dance Dance Revolution_. "I used to play that all the time!" I pointed at the machine.

"Ah, yeah. I used to spend hours at the arcade trying to master all the songs," Siam said.

Mouse turned back with a grin. "You too? Man, we were losers when we lived in the Matrix!"

"You forget though," Siam tapped Mouse's head. "You still are a loser."

"Not true, I'm a pimp."

"Correction – a digital pimp. That makes you more of a loser."

"Shut up. You're just jealous because you're not cool..."

"Stop bickering, you two," Trinity said.

We opened a door to the back room. Inside were a table and a couple of chairs. There were a bunch of technical gadgets on the table. Morpheus told me to sit down on one of the chairs, and I did. He sat down across from me, and I could see my reflection in his sunglasses.

"Lady of Spain, you have a choice. You may either go with us, on to the real world. Be warned – it is probably not what you expect. It is desolate and very unsafe. To do so, you may take the red pill." He opened his right hand. On his open palm, there was a little red capsule. "Or," he continued, "You may choose to stay here, living in oblivion for the rest of your life. You will wake up tomorrow with no memory of this meeting, no memory of trying to find a way out of the Matrix. If that is what you choose, then take the blue pill." He opened up his palm, and there was a capsule the size of the other one, but it was blue. "The choice is up to you."

"Morpheus," I asked, "Have people refused to take the red pill before?"

"Yes, many do."

To take a chance and risk death, or to pass by and risk nothing? Red or blue? I did not know if I wanted to have either. My eyes darted back and forth between the two pills.

Truth or Oblivion?

I slowly began to realize what I wanted more, and I reached for it. Soon, the pill was in my hands, and I began to have second thoughts. But I placed it in my mouth and swallowed it as I watched myself sway in the reflection of Morpheus's sunglasses.


End file.
